Bigger battles ahead for Samajwadi Party

Kudos to the Uttar Pradesh electorate for eliminating fears of horse-trading by according absolute majority to the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party. With SP, however, fears of yet another spell of 'goonda raj' (rule of the goons) have returned. Violence, it seems, is synonymous with SP in power, as its intolerant supporters started reminding us soon after the party's victory.

The fears spring from the party's past that casts a long shadow on its future. The Bahujan Samaj Party had joined SP in November 1993, in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition, to prevent the Bharatiya Janata Party from coming to power. But BSP pulled out of the government within 19 months on a single issue - lawlessness and violence against Dalits. In 2003, Mulayam once again rode to power by splitting BSP, and presided over a regime that was considered more violent than the previous two when he was the chief minister. In 2007, he lost the polls on the single issue of promoting goonda raj.

Mayawati's Dalit radicalism and her alienation from the citizens who had voted her to power, however, drove them once again to look for alternatives five years later. During the entire election campaign, Mulayam and his son, the would-be chief minister Akhilesh Yadav kept assuring voters that goondaism would not be tolerated. But SP's supporters are already proving the father-son duo wrong. It seems violence may last full term in Uttar Pradesh.

Why does SP's core social constituency behave in this manner? Anthropological tools can come in handy in decoding this violent conduct. To be sure, Mulayam, the 72-year-old party chief, is no promoter of violence. Neither is his foreign-educated son. Yet, the people they represent are ruthlessly consistent in their violent conduct. That is because of their distinctive social identity.

Take the road rage cases in Delhi and the NCR, where the culprits more often than not belong to the neo-rich class. On the outskirts of Delhi, there are people with three kinds of vehicles - tractor, bullock cart and car. While tractor is meant for farming and transporting heavy things, bullock carts are used to ferry cow dung and cattle feed. The neo-rich were humble farmers before their lands were acquired and they became millionaires overnight. No wonder, while driving cars they behave as if they are on bullock carts.

Something similar has happened in the case of SP's core social constituency. This social class acquired economic and political clout without undergoing any social reformation. What does a Yadav gentleman seek after acquiring economic power and political dominance like the Rajputs? Of course, a Rajput-like social recognition, with Dalits in the village bowing to him. Dalits bowed before Rajputs when India was more feudal and Dalits more dependent.

Yadavs, along with the rest of the OBCs, too have been victims of the caste hierarchy. BR Ambedkar deployed twin tools for emancipation of Dalits - asking the state to take corrective steps and asking the community to reform from within. He asked Dalits to stop eating meat of dead animals and asked them to embrace alphabets. He asked Dalits to look at English as one of the means of emancipation at a time when even vernaculars were not available to the community.

Mulayam's socialist agitation anchored by Ram Manohar Lohia was a single-track narrow gauge line. While Ambedkar told Dalits that English was the milk of a lioness and encouraged them to go for it, Lohia told Yadavs that English was a linguistic evil and launched an agitation against it.

As violence threatens to bring disgrace to the young Akhilesh who seems so promising, Mulayam needs to unlearn what he has learnt during his political life. He needs to reinvent himself and turn into a social reformer.